Many virtualization startups I’ve met with recently have expressed some degree of hesitation, even skepticism, about developing support for Hyper-V. I find this perplexing.

First, VMware is likely to accelerate their annexation of adjacent markets currently served by their partners. This is primarily because their investors have their feet to the fire after they missed Wall Street analyst expectations for revenue growth in their last earnings release. Expect additions to their acquisition list that already includes Akimbi (test lab automation), Propero (desktop connection broker), Dunes Technologies (orchestration) and Thinstall (application virtualization).

While getting acquired may be a good outcome, there are few positive angles for startups that suddenly find themselves in direct competition with their platform vendor – just ask the folks at test lab automation shops Surgient and VMLogix. Supporting heterogeneous environments could prove a sound strategy to stave off a potential existential threat.

Next, there’s the perception that Hyper-V is late to the party with sub-standard technology. The crucial thing to realize is that Hyper-V’s key differentiator is not about being first to market or even having the most technical razzle-dazzle. It’s about distribution, and more specifically, Enterprise Agreements.

Let’s say you’re a corporate IT manager. How troublesome do you think it will be to renew your existing contract with Microsoft, which incidentally will come with Hyper-V baked in? Compare that with the pain involved in bringing in brand new vendors, explaining and convincing management that this “virtualization” thing is important, running a series of proof-of-concepts, trying to extract dollars from a shrinking budget to pay for your deployment, and so on and so forth.

IDC forecasts that the Windows Server 2008 installed base will be 2.5M by the end of 2009, and 18M by the end of 2011. So if you’re running a virtualization startup and are still dithering over Hyper-V, there are at least 18M reasons to consider otherwise.